‘Parent Blog’

You don’t have to spend money to create a math board game for your children. With a few basic materials, you can make something fun at home. Depending on your children’s ages and artistic interests, they can even help you develop one! To get started, you just need…

It’s been one month since the Bedtime Math book came out, and the overwhelming response to it has shown that all of us together – me, you, other parents and grandparents and teachers – are part of a movement. A major one. There are lots of adults out there who don’t like math, and it’s turned math into a not-so-beloved thing in our culture. With Bedtime Math we hope to overhaul that by showing the next generation of kids that math is a blast, a treat just like playtime or dessert. And you all, by getting the book and sharing it with the little people in your life, have helped this movement grow. Thank you for helping spread the word!

As the book rolled out – and sold out twice on Amazon – we noticed some really interesting things about this movement we’re all a part of, including:

“Mom, this toy broke, can you buy me a new one?” “Dad, I really want this new game, will you buy it for me?” Sound familiar?
Think of these questions as mathematics learning opportunities. They open to door to discussions about the value of money. Finding real-world applications is one of the easiest ways to get kids excited about learning and it does not get more authentic than earning and saving money.

Backyard treasure hunts were one of my favorite summer math activities when my kids were young. They’re pretty simple to carry out, but do require a bit of advance planning on your part, especially if you want to create clues geared to the interests and abilities specific to each child (like the daily Bedtime Math problems Wee Ones, Little Kids and Big Kids). A good treasure hunt leads to hours of engaging play not to mention early training in spatial skills and a lot of laughs.

Riding in a car with a toddler often requires a lot of patience. Even brief trips can be full of many questions and sometimes tantrums. But with a bit of creativity, imagination, and silliness, you can turn car rides into a lot of fun and even create math learning opportunities.We began doing on-the-go math when our oldest daughter (now 7) was a toddler and now her younger brother enjoys it as much as does. Math + fun all wrapped up in a game initiated by an effort to keep my toddler entertained and distracted.

Modern trading card games (TCGs) like Yu-Gi-Oh!, Pokemon and Magic: The Gathering create opportunities for practicing basic math skills along with building logic and strategy skills that lead to hours, sometimes years, of math fun in a peer-centered environment.

Hold on to your happy meals, because math is about to take lunchtime to a new level. Tanwiches–tangram sandwiches–are a hot new trend sweeping the globe. According to a blog on The Guardian “edible mathematics” is all the rage. Edible math goes beyond the basic ingredient measuring activity common to all baking.

Have you noticed the fireflies lighting up the summer night sky? Fireflies, also called lightning bugs, are beetles and are one of the few insects parents actually allow their children to bring inside the house. There are about 2,000 different species of fireflies. Here’s a fun firefly craft that can spark Bedtime Math fun!

STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) camps are not only great fun, they’re the preferred type of camp for some kids. In fact, in my family, they’re all the rage. But some people are under the impression that kids only attend math and science when their parents push them to do so.

You know that our favorite way to make math fun is to cuddle and snuggle while sharing a math problem with our little ones at the end of the day, but as part of last week’s book launch celebration, we chatted with parents on Twitter via The Maker Mom’s #STEMchat about other ways to playfully engage youngsters in math.